The Most Impactful Shows of the Century So Far According to Vogue Editors

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0:39You can find the links to the survey in our episode and show notes. Thank you so much for listening to The Run-Through.

0:48This is The Run-Through. I'm Nicole Phelps. Throughout December of last year, the Vogue Runway team published a roundup of all the major trends of the last 25 years of fashion. We did a year a day and you can go back and find that on the Vogue app. As part of that project, I invited my colleagues Laird Borelli-Person, Virginia Smith, and Mark Waduchi, who's now at Vanity Fair, to discuss their picks for the most impactful fashion shows of the last quarter century. After the September to Remember we just saw with 12 debuts across New York, Milan, and Paris, I wonder which of those shows will emerge as the most impactful in years to come.

1:26Could it be Mathieu Blaisier's Chanel, Heider Ackerman's Tom Ford? Only Time Will Tell. So as we close out 2025 and start making our end-of-year lists, we're revisiting that episode. Here's my conversation with Laird, Virginia, and Mark. Welcome. Hi, Nicole. Hi. I'm excited to hear about your picks. And again, I definitely recommend listeners follow along on the app and on the site to see the looks we're talking about today. But before we get to our own picks, we have to go back to the Reader's Choice list. They selected their top 25, and because of time, we didn't get to all of them on Tuesday.

2:06So at the top of this list is Versace Spring 2018, and I can guess why the readers had such a big reaction to it. To me, it really is the beginning of the return of the supermodel. Donatella was celebrating the 20th or marking the 20th anniversary of her brother Johnny's passing, and she brought back to the runway some of Johnny's favorite models to work with, including Naomi, including Cindy, Helena Christensen was there, Carla Bruni. It was a great list of models and even Kaia Gerber was there. So it was a mom-daughter moment. And the clothes were very much in honor and in like an ode to Johnny's collections in the 90s.

2:48And I would say not only was it the rebirth of the supermodel, But it was the beginning of this idea of re-editions and fashion being very open to revisiting the past, whereas maybe once upon a time people were more focused on it has to be new, it has to be new, it has to be new. Well, it was around that time that Google Trends said that nostalgia was the trend of the year, I believe in 2018. So I think this played into that, but it also brought it forward. It was forward and back because you had Cindy and Kaya. You had the prints but not the exact designs. And I think there's a lot of longing that we've seen over the past few years for the 90s in particular.

3:35And, like, it's not a fear of missing out because you couldn't have been there. But you still want it because you came up with it on Tumblr or Instagram or Pinterest. And so I think it's a really interesting dynamic where the past and the present are in constant dialogue. 2018, we're a decade into Instagram culture, more or less. And the idea that photo archives, which have been uploaded there and fed to us via algorithm, you know, the audience, a young audience would have known what they were looking at, both not just the famous faces, but also the prints. And that kind of visual remix was primed and ready.

4:16And Donatella, like her brother before her, is so clever at understanding where that pop cultural needle is on that. I'm glad you brought up Instagram culture, Mark, because the next show sort of has to do with that in sort of the reverse way. We wanted to put Tom Ford's eponymous debut for his label, which was in 2010, on the list. But at the time, I don't know if you all remember, he forbade any photographs being taken. I think he had one photographer there. He kept those photos for internal use. And everybody else, you know, who wasn't at the show, which was many of us because it was a very small show, were left to wonder what happened.

4:59It really was going back to Tuesday's show when we're talking about keeping things for the clients only. It was a very, very private experience. And the sad thing about it for all of us was Beyonce, Julianne Moore, Lauren Hutton all walked the runway. Also on the list, Sarah Burton's Spring 2020 Alexander McQueen collection. And Sarah is obviously very au courant because she has since left McQueen to take the job at Givenchy. I was happy to see this show on the list, the readers pick it. And in fact, Virginia, this is a collection that produced one of your recent Met Gala looks. It did. I wore one of those beautiful tailored looks with ruffles for last year's Met Gala.

5:46They were nice enough to let me borrow it. So I have a deep appreciation for this collection. And you're happy that Sarah Burton is returning to the spotlight, right? I'm very excited. I think we all are. You know, this is like kind of a quintessential Sarah Burton-McQueen collection. It was nice to see it, but it's actually a really significant collection for its casting. It had a generation of girls that are now supermodels, but they were babies then, Kaya and Vittoria. But it was also one of Stella Tennant's last shows, and it featured Jill Kortlev. Jill was exclusive to McQueen that season.

6:22And it was not that long ago, but it was kind of a big deal to see a curved girl walk McQueen at the time. And the next season, Paloma walked that show. And so it has a place in fashion history for that reason, too. And I remember Sarah gave away amazing sweaters on every seat that season. Yes, she did. With your little initials. Yeah, correct. Wow. All right. Right. Lueve Spring 2023. No designer has gotten more press, I think, in the last year than Jonathan Anderson, thanks to his work with the director Luca Guadagnino and many other reasons. So it's a natural to have Jonathan on this list. And there's a number of looks.

7:10The Anthurium dress that is so graphic is one that comes to mind. But for me, it's that pixel look. Jonathan is so creative and fun, and he's so damn smart. And that idea, I think, is one of his smartest. that I implore everyone to go look at the picture. It's look 19 because you really have to see it to understand. But he knew what that look would look like photographically. And the effect isn't the same IRL, if you see, you know, it's been in the office before, as it is in a picture. And which means that that look wasn't actually about being in the room. It was about seeing it on Instagram or seeing it on Vogue runway.

7:49And he was making a meme. He was creating internet content in real life, which is so brilliant. And I think that idea will continue to be influential, especially as Jonathan goes on. I'm glad you called out that look because I also love it. I'm kind of obsessed with glitch culture and music, hyper-pop. But I love that it exists in the same collection with the Pantier dress, which opened the show, Pantier being the extended hips that women wore in the 18th century and then were revived in the early 20s. And I think that juxtaposition for me as an archivist is really beautiful to see the internet culture mixing with, you know, fashion history that's been updated.

8:32But I also think that maybe Glitch is one way to describe Jonathan's genius because it's always not quite what it should be. And that's why it's so exciting. It's kind of caught in the moment between what you expect and what it actually is. And I love that idea. The readers also selected Saint Laurent Fall 2023. This is the show where Anthony Vaccarello did the shoulders. I mean, bigger than football, American football shoulders, you know, inches added to your profile and your silhouette. And they became super influential, right? That shape. You know, Anthony has been, to me, he's just really, really coming to his own the last few years at Saint Laurent.

9:19I mean, he was always good. He just mines a specific sort of area that he loves, and he does such an incredible job of it. And, you know, talk about women taking up space. Like, Anthony gave them the clothes to do that, and he continues to do, like, incredible collections. So I have a huge amount of respect for him and what he's doing there. Virginia, when those clothes came into the office, did you ever try on one of those jackets? I did. I felt like too big, you know, like I was just, I'm too tall, too big. Too much of me was going on for that. Same. I tried it on too. But it looks great for other people.

9:58I was like, I don't think I can pull this off, but I admire anyone who can. It changes your psychology though, doesn't it? It does. And the funny thing is this beautiful, sophisticated collection that speaks to Yves Saint Laurent's tailoring was inspired by Working Girl, which is, you know, Staten Island Ferry coming to Wall Street. Anthony is now multitasking as a movie producer and is having quite a good run with Amelia Perez, right? Sure is. So Tom Brown is another designer multitasker. He's also our CFDA chairman. And fall 2023 was his debut couture collection in Paris. He had shown there many times in the past, But this is the first time he joined the couture schedule.

10:44And Mark, I think you were there. I was there. I've been to a couple of shows that have taken place in theaters before. Opening Ceremony did one in New York, I think at Lincoln Center maybe. But Tom did this genius thing where, you know, we were all invited to the opera house in Paris, which designers have historically shown that before. But you usually enter through the front. We enter through the back. And you went backstage through the bowels of the Opera Garnier, and you were sat. You didn't know it at the time, but you were sat on stage. And then when the show started, the curtain came up, and there were thousands of little cardboard cutout men.

11:30I mean, I don't know what they were made of, but little cardboard figures in each and every seat of the Opera Garnier, little Tom Brown avatars. and so all of a sudden you felt like you were part of the spectacle. And it was one of Tom's, I don't know, it was probably a 40-minute show that had narrative and had plot points and probably motifs and supporting characters. Going to a Tom Brown show is like going to Broadway. You need to invest your time into a Tom Brown show, no? Yeah, it's like going to see The Brutalist. It's fabulous. the intermission might be necessary. Yeah, I think that it really is a moment where he is wearing both of his caps, his designer cap and his CFDA boss cap and sending a message to the world and especially to Europe, which oftentimes, European fashion, which oftentimes disputes this or discounts this fact that American fashion can compete on the world stage and definitely Tom Brown's can.

12:33Also the stage of the opera Garnier. No less. No less. All right. This is the last show that our readers picked, and it is Mathieu Blasie's Spring 2023 Bottega Veneta. And when Laird and I were making our selections for the poll, we had a big debate over doing his debut or the second collection, Spring 2023. And tell us, Laird, why you felt so sure we should use this one. I'm obsessed with this collection and it inspired an essay that I wrote about the eye becoming an unreliable narrator in a digital world with AI and fakes. We don't know if what we see is real. And the tank and the jeans were marvelous, but the flannel shirt was something else.

13:22I think it belongs to grunge. It belongs. It has so many things attached to it. But you would never in a million years think it's leather. unless someone used words to tell you or you felt it. So this iconic piece that has so many built-in associations to see it rendered this way and need to be told what it actually is, it just brought back to mind Magritte's, you know, this is not a pipe. It was what it was and it's not what it is. And I find it fascinating and more complicated than the tank because of the pop culture references. and that he put it on Kate Moss right that that just took it not only was she going to get the most attention but also she was part of that moment in the 90s from which it came and it's been so influential now you see all kinds of high street brands doing versions of that trompe l 'oeil with that in mind whether they know it or not I think they know that's it for the reader's choice Now that we've come to the end of the list, I'm curious what you all think and what you learned from studying it.

14:36I think for one, there is some recency bias. You know, if you look at the list as you laid it out chronologically, Nicole, the first 15 years have only half a dozen or so shows. And then the last decade has the majority of the shows on the list. And I think that's natural, particularly with younger readers who will remember the last 10 years better than the prior 15. But I also think there's something about how, as we were saying before, Instagram has habituated our eyes to seeing runway images and the designers know that they need to create something that's going to stand out. So Rachel Tashin, who's a critic at the Washington Post, she actually texted me and said that seeing the reader's choices made her feel old.

15:18And I said, honestly, same. But I think it's because designers today have learned so much about how to stage a fashion show from those earlier designers like Hussein Shalyan and Alexander McQueen and Dries Van Noten, that they've honed the devices about how to create spectacle much better today. I was pretty impressed by the range of designers that were included, though, I have to say. I was, you know, very pleasantly surprised to see someone like Idrides Van Noten included on that list. Obviously, that show was incredible, the one I missed that we can go into once again. But while that show was sort of a spectacle, he's not really a designer who—that sort of spectacle is not so important to him.

16:02That's not really—he's not an Instagram designer. shall we say. He's not really a showman. He really lets the clothes speak for himself. So I was impressed that he made the list, to be honest, and obviously very thrilled. And then someone like Victor and Roth, who I was surprised they actually made the list, because I wouldn't have thought they were as well known as many of the other designers. But that, I think, goes to show you that, you know, those collections that do have a real sort of Instagram moment recently also are, you know, so impactful. But I thought the range was impressive. And I think it represents a bit of a generational shift.

16:38I think Miu Miu today is what Prada was to people in the 90s, for example. And I also think there's a sort of cult of designer and brand that people really, it's, I think fashion is moving closer to sports in the sense of like fandom. There's always been fandom, but it's people really deep dive. There are, you know, scroll and scroll, and there are a million people telling you the details of a specific nitty-gritty about a collection. And so I think that's become more of the norm. To have Diunia on that list from 2000, I'm so happy with this list. I guess my big takeaway is that I'm an outlier because at least two, but possibly three, I'm trying to remember, of my favorites didn't make the top 25.

17:27So we'll have a lot more to talk about after the break.

17:33Thank you.

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18:23Okay, we're back. We are now going to talk about editors' favorites. And the way I want everyone to think about this is there were 25 shows that didn't make the list. We gave the readers a selection of 50. And there's some on that second 25 that are just too important not to talk about. So while we may talk about specific collections, we'll also talk about the influence and the impact that these designers have had over the course of the last 25 years. And at the top, we are going to start with Balenciaga Fall 2007. I think this might be one of your favorite Nicolas Guesquière collections ever.

19:02I don't know how this did not make the top. Me neither. I mean, this was a tour de force of a show. I mean, almost every editor I know would put this in their top list, I think. I certainly would. But it was this amazing multicultural blend of collegiate jackets, ecot prints, the jodhpurs. I mean, you just saw all this coming at you, and you couldn't believe it. And the thing that was so incredible about this show, I think, is, of course, you wanted those looks on the runway. But it also was so—it sort of changed the way you looked at your own wardrobe. And you could go into your closet and relook at how you sort of styled yourself.

19:44It was so influential in that regard. Like the next day, I remember seeing anyone who had brought a scarf to Paris had it wrapped around their neck, you know, with every single print they owned on their body, you know. And if you were lucky enough to have a jodhpur in your suitcase, you were really doing it. But it was such an incredible, incredible show. I absolutely loved the clothes of the show. I actually have a gray flannel varsity jacket from this collection that is so beautiful. it did not fit me, I don't think, when it was given to me, and it does not fit me now. But I still go into my closet and look at it every once in a while just to see how beautifully made it is.

20:25The incredible thing about Nicola is that he really toggled between these sci-fi collections, and he was looking a lot at Cristobal Balenciaga's own work from the mid-century. And then he would do a show like this that was really all about the street. I think that's what he said at the time. It's about the street mix. And he could do it all. I mean, but really, how do you pick a favorite Nicolas Balenciaga collection? It's almost an impossibility. I remember that store that's now a Comme des Garcons store in Chelsea with the kind of egg-shaped door. And I remember going there and just sort of like it was almost like going to church.

21:06You would just go and, you know, look around, light a candle, go to the various chapels, see the altar. Beg the sales associates to go back in the stock room and find something more to bring out. Yeah, pay significant alms.

21:22Okay, so a year later is another show that we think, you know, is not to be missed. And it was Prada's Spring 2008. And this was the fairies collection. Yes, Miucia worked with an illustrator and sort of did Ossie Clark sort of silhouettes in these vibrant colors and psychedelia. But I think that Mark Waduchi is the one to talk about this collection because it's his most favorite. So I turn it over to you. It is my most favorite Prada collection. Sarah Moer in her review started by saying, fairies at Prada? Why, yes. And Prada is always unpredictable and I think purposefully maybe even inscrutable.

22:07But this collection really stood out as something different. It had a few prints that became really popular. There's the windowpane Prada skirt that has continued and we see all the time. But this particular Art Nouveau motif of like a wood nymph seemed to come from total left field. She's like a green absinthe fairy that's printed on these retro 1960s silhouettes in silk chiffon. And there's collars that look like flower petals. It was like Ossie Clark meets Ferngully. And I don't know, it was just the antithesis of what you might expect from one season to the next. It was like as if Donald Judd all of a sudden started doing figurative painting.

22:49And I think because of that reason, it was so unexpected that it immediately became a cult classic. I threw a party once and my friend Colby Mugrabi who's a collector showed up wearing a look from that collection and it was like my present to wear it and I think these pieces are like for vintage archive hunters are still The Grail Such a great show Mucha is another designer who it was so hard to pick which collection I know. The peplums, the wrinkles. I mean, it goes on and on the list. Rick Owens, Spring 2014. This was a very big moment. He invited American dancers to perform at this show. And sadly, I wasn't there.

23:43I think it might be the only Rick show that I haven't seen in a decade and a half. And I can't believe this is the one. Were you there, Virginia?

24:21being cool. He's just the ultimately cool designer. And his clothes are so good for kids who are lucky enough to be able to save up and afford, you know, the dark shadow tennis shoe to like what we would want. And it's just, he's very unusual in that way to me. There's always this line outside his store in Soho, right? And it's always kids out there. And you're like, how can they afford anything in that Rick Owens store? And going to a Rick Owens show is one of the highlights of Paris Fashion Week, right? Because he's one of these designers who has developed this cult around him. And his clothes are exceptional and odd and eccentric, and they come dressed head to toe.

25:03And it's just a trip to be there. Yeah. And he's another multidisciplinary designer. He has a furniture show at Salon 94 for right now uptown. But I love that he exists because as this California transplant and Paris goth genius because I think sometimes people think of fashion as being for one kind of person. And the Rick Owens girl is a really different person than the Oscar de la Renta girl. And it's just really great that I think he's a good example of how inclusive has many other meanings now. But, you know, how a broad and inclusive fashion actually can be. I mean, Rick talks a lot about this, about being an outsider.

25:48And having had that experience, he has, you know, it has transformed him and given him a really inclusive vision, both in terms of, you know, aesthetics and, you know, looking through. Some of the collections are very couture-like and, you know, interested in other people doing things that you might not know about. And I think we all benefit from that. Well, talking about cults, designer cults, Phoebe Philo, of course, has a very big one. And again, we clicked through many a Celine show to decide which one to put on this list. And in the end, Celine Spring 2014 is what we chose. And for those who can't conjure it out of their head, this is a show where Phoebe Philo sort of fell in love with color and these bold brush strokes on these sort of simple-ish shapes like a boxy tee, a lean tank that went down to the thighs, and a pleated skirt with an asymmetrical hem.

26:54And the prints are so exceptional. And I will say that there is an editor who works on Floor 25 who still wears pieces from this collection going on, yes, 11 years ago. So it was a great collection then, and it maintains. It's still a great collection. And, of course, we were all bereft when Phoebe stepped away and took her six years to come back. But now she's back. And lots of us are very happy about that. Yes, we are. I mean, this was sort of a surprising collection from her. You know, it's a bit of an outlier with her other shows. But I think it sort of showed women who don't necessarily wear color in print how to wear color in print.